Paddy looked up in surprise. "That's just what I thought it was, only I thought I must be crazy, imagining such a thing here."
Peter Gross sighed. "I thought so," he said with gentle resignation. "It must be her."
"Who? What?" There was no escaping the lad's eager curiosity.
"The ghost proa. She's a pirate—Ah Sing's own ship, if reports be true. I've never seen her; few white men have; but there are stories enough about her, God knows. She's equipped with a big marine engine imported from New York, I've heard; and built like a launch, though she's got the trimmings of a proa. She can outrun any ship, steam or sail, this side of Hong Kong, and she's manned by a crew of fiends that never left a man, woman or child alive yet on any ship they've taken."
Paddy's face whitened a little, and he looked earnestly at the ship. Presently he started and caught Peter Gross's arm.
"There," he exclaimed. "The motor again! Did you hear it?"
"Ay," Peter Gross replied. "We had gained a few hundred yards on them, and they've made it up."
Paddy noted the furtive glances cast at them by the crew of their own proa, mostly Bugis and Bajaus, the sea-rovers and the sea-wash, with a slight sprinkling of Dyaks. He called Peter Gross's attention to it.
"They know the proa," the resident said. "They'll neither fight nor run. The fight is ours, Paddy. You'd better get some rifles on deck."
"We're going to fight?" Rouse asked eagerly.